“Accumulating, transforming,
creating photographic images and volumes,
materializing the action, I isolate the creative gesture as a moment fixed in time.”
– Henrik Strömberg

The Quartiere dell’Arte (Art District), a program conceived by the Fondazione Morra to foster a renewed awareness of contemporary art in Naples, presents a new exhibition project created for Palazzo Spinelli di Tarsia, home of the Shōzō Shimamoto Foundation. The space will host Refraction of Lightness, a site-specific installation featuring serigraphs and hand-blown glass sculptures and volumes by Swedish artist Henrik Strömberg. Curated by Chiara Valci Mazzara and Loredana Troise, in collaboration with the Fondazione Morra and Laboratorio Avella Naples with Gianluigi Prencipe, the exhibition is the result of Strömberg’s three-month residency. Within the historic spaces of Palazzo Tarsia, the glass sculptures and serigraphs act as focal points—densities around which the installation’s immersive landscape of assembled elements revolves. The serigraphs are recontextualized into a unicum: a large-scale work that mirrors—and refracts into—the new series of glass sculptures conceived specifically for this exhibition. Strömberg’s work emerges from a process of exploration—of form and content, volume and concept, of multiplication and refraction of meaning.
Reclaimed and organic materials such as paper, glass, burned newspapers, and pigments shape works that invite the viewer into a self-sustaining ecosystem—one that generates new forms and, consequently, new meanings. Every element becomes part of a larger whole. The assembled prints, while referencing their original meanings and aesthetics, gain new semantic layers. Simultaneously, the glass volumes reflect the intricacy of the creative act. In these glass works, transformation and the alteration of content occur in tandem. Ultimately, matter is shaped and transferred across media. All elements shift continuously, converging and layering meaning. Nothing remains isolated—everything transforms, like volcanic magma in eruption. In the rooms dedicated to the Gutai master, Strömberg—an artist from Northern Europe—approaches the exhibition space through a network of references tied to the creative gesture. Echoes of Surrealism, the revaluation of the objet trouvé, and the manipulation of form to shape content are evident throughout his work. In the prints, we sense the residual meaning of their origins; in the sculptural volumes, the forms evoke biological entities, inviting the viewer into an altered perspective. Strömberg distills the source to focus content at the very core of visual perception. He doesn’t pursue clarity—instead, he triggers a re-emergence of the subject. With clarity set aside, the viewer is led to unexpected outcomes and ephemeral impressions. As the installation of volumes and other components takes shape, a sub-ecosystem emerges from the interplay of seemingly disparate elements. Photographic fragments, negative cut-outs, paper pieces, and sculptural volumes coexist—not by chance, but through a deliberate multiplication of possibilities. Each element contributes to an expanded perception of the whole—like a dance in which every component plays toward a higher harmony. Reflections, image fragments, and the vertical arrangement of the installation form an immersive landscape through which the viewer moves—absorbing the complexity of elements that are never redundant, yet always cohesive. There is no singular interpretation, but rather a kaleidoscope of perspectives shaped by the equal presence of varied media in the final composition.  Chiara Valci Mazzara